"Its courage and endurance are beyond all praise. It is an honour to belong to such an Army." But though in truth decided, the battle was not yet over. The Germans refused to accept defeat. They now adopted different tactics. These were a tremendous bombardment of the British lines alternating with repeated attacks. The latter were not as before directed against one or two decisive points of the front, but distributed all round and included the part of the front to the north of Ypres. There four hostile army corps were employed. The attacks were not only made with smaller masses and more numerous, but they were delivered both by day and by night and almost without cessation. It was, in fact, a tactic of wearing down. This went on for six days and nights without cessation. The struggle was marked by many remarkable episodes due to the fact that the Germans, conscious of defeat, now fought with redoubled bitterness and with much of the spirit of bravado and revenge. One instance of this was the extraordinary attempt to carry a French trench by a charge of cavalry. This, of course, was no better than suicide. "Every horse," says "Eye Witness," in recording the affair, "was killed, but those riders who were not hit continued the charge on foot. The last survivors were slain on the very parapet of the trench." At another point, where the bodies of a company of Germans enfiladed by machine-gun fire lay as they had fallen in a regular row, a second body of the enemy advanced at nightfall, and along the line of corpses dug themselves in. By dint of these attacks, and while the British troops were strengthening their line, turning their hasty pre-cover into trenches of systematic make, with zigzag communication ways, and supports trenches and "dugouts" in the rear, the Germans in many places advanced their positions so close that the occupants of the trench on one side were within earshot of those on the other. It became the enemy's practice to bring up heavy artillery in the night, to shell a British position, and while the troops were sitting tight under the bombardment to "dig in" close by. This closeness of the opposing entrenched positions in many places led to repeated night raids; a form of activity in which more especially the Indian troops proved adepts. An Indian night raid, which recovered a line of trenches the enemy had taken, is thus described by those who witnessed it: In the afternoon it began to rain heavily, and the rain continued to fall as the night darkened. British troops in the trenches, knowing of the massing of the enemy, were keenly on the alert amidst the most depressing circumstances, and none were allowed the comfort of a sleep.